Eight Page Essay

writing things down makes them real

I've been so sad lately, so stressed and miserable. I don't want to forget that in the middle of this, some things have been fantastically good.

One of my students told me that I made her feel valued, made her feel like her ideas were important.

One of my classmates, in a class I've always felt unqualified for, told me that she admired my comments and criticism.

And maybe things are over with Satanist Dan and I just don't know it yet. Maybe in January I'll know. I'll be sad. I'll pine over him, then vilify him, then, hopefully, think about other things.

But I want to remember him singing and dancing The Electric Company in my bedroom. I want to remember grocery shopping at midnight for biscuits & gravy, beer, and ice cream. I want to remember him accidentally kicking a hole in his living room wall, and I want to remember us laughing about it. There's a lot of laughing I want to remember.

I'm not trying to make it more than it was. But if it's over I'd like to remember that it was fun while it lasted. And that's a good thing. I need to think about good things.

The Message Leaving and Waiting

Hey it's me. Call me when you get this, I'd like to talk to you.

Job title and description

If the deal had always been that I have this guy I like who I see every once and a while, almost like a long-distance boyfriend but the distance is his busy schedule rather than miles, I think I would be fine with it. I was willing to do something like that with Other Mike. If I didn't expect to see Satanist Dan on a weekly basis, because I knew I couldn't, would I mind? Is the problem here that he's got the wrong job title and if I just re-name who he is and what this is, I'll be happy?

But if this had been the situation from the beginning, I think I would feel very differently about him. I wouldn't have had the chance to develop an emotional attachment. I might think, wistfully, what if I could see him more, I bet we'd be great together, but it's a very different kind of wish.

There seem to be three possible outcomes. The first, and best, would be Satanist Dan acquiring more free time (and spending some of it with me). But that isn't under my control, and if it isn't an option, there are two other outcomes. I can have a boy I chat with sometimes, and might see once or twice in the next few months, or I can have an ex-boyfriend. And I keep thinking that something is better than nothing, but I'm not sure that's true. I'm not sure I can go back to thinking of him as an occasional fling. And if I can't think of him that way I don't think I can be happy treating him that way.

I know that I need to ask him. I need to know if this situation will change. If it's a matter of waiting, I can manage. Not patiently, but I'd get through it. If it isn't a matter of waiting, if this is How Things Are Now, then I should probably leave. And I don't want to leave. So I'm afraid to ask him about it because I'm afraid it's going to mean breaking up.

But I think I've reached the tipping point. I am starting to think, should I text him now with a message saying Call me when you get this or should I wait until tomorrow morning when he will likely be home with his kids? Having a conversation during a break at work is less than ideal. But I worry that if I wait I'll lose my nerve.

I guess it needs a little more work

familiar patterns

Satanist Dan got a second job about two weeks ago which means he's working all the time, and getting three hours of sleep a night, and I never get to see him. I gripe a lot, to my friends, to Twitter, I rant in my head. I mean, what's the point of having a boyfriend if I never get to see him? And that thought is sometimes followed by Maybe I should get a new boyfriend. But I don't want a new boyfriend. I like the one I've got. He isn't just the role he plays and he isn't interchangeable. He used to be. When he was Boy 2, any time I might spend with him could have just as easily been switched with Boy 1 or 3, and I might have been more excited about 3. But then he got a name, albeit a joking one, and I appear to have acquired feelings, albeit not-very-serious ones. And I joke about it, and I put on an air of oh yeah whatever, but I really do miss him.

This makes all kinds of alarms go off in my head. I can't have feelings and stuff for him! That's what happens in a REAL relationship. And that's NOT what this is! I feel like, despite all my protests, I keep falling into familiar patterns. I wasn't going to have a boyfriend at all. I was going to "date," in non-committal, non-exclusive kind of ways. That didn't last. I wouldn't call us committed, but we are exclusive. And now here I am, missing, not my boyfriend, but Dan. I like him. I care about him. He makes me happy. But when I look at it, I don't think I'm really going overboard. It's not particularly clingy to want to see him once or twice a week. I'm not considering making changes or plans to stay with him. I think it bothers me, not because I worry that I care too much or am taking this too far, but that it is one further step towards caring too much and taking it too far. I feel like those D.A.R.E. people warning against marijuana and tobacco as "gateway drugs." Is this affection I have a gateway into something more dangerous?

here and there

Like every other blog I write, this one is about change. In this case, it's about changing location, about going to Ohio for a week and coming back. I can't disassociate my life from the places it happens in, and so when I leave those places, I leave everything else associated with them. In the week I spent with Fenna, I had no other obligations, no other friends, nothing but what was in front of me. And that was amazing. But once I open my apartment door again, and what is in front of me is this Iowa, again, it becomes everything. All I see is all there is. The rest feels like someone else's memory.